Why not do a group read of THE great American novel? Moby-Dick?

Sun Apr 13 10:57:53 CDT 2014

Speaking of great books, The Public Burning is one. So many books, so little time...

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> On Apr 13, 2014, at 11:53 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
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> I'm also definitely up for a group read this summer, completely at peace with the idea that it will fizzle to nothing by early fall.
> 
> Laura
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> -----Original Message-----
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> From: Keith Davis 
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> Sent: Apr 13, 2014 12:50 AM
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> To: Michael Bailey 
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> Cc: P-list 
> 
> Subject: Re: Re: Why not do a group read of THE great American novel? Moby-Dick?
> 
> 
> 
> A summertime GR (pun-ish) might be a good time had by some, including me. Since I didn't get to do BE, I'd vote for that, or Melville, or M & D, or any of a long list....
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> On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 12:13 AM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:
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> 
>  You make a good point!
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> 
> 
> That part about fast fish and loose fish isn't so much about the america that could've been as about the law of having & holding - Mr Dick maybe represents that wonderful america, turtle island, this huge intelligent being that was minding its own business - colonizing krill, if you will - till Ahab came along. Oh yeah
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> And with his harpoon
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> Pricked Moby-Dick - Owey! O weh!
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> alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
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> 
>    Great questions and comments. Yeah, hard to keep folks engaged. But
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>    thee has been talk of reading M-D here for years so...
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> 
> 
>    Yeah, we would certainly take on the American novel question. M-D
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>    doesn't go west across the continent sized nation, cutting it open,
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>    exposing its buried voices, it doesn't race through the dust to the
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>    grapes of wrathful California, it doesn't even take a road less
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>    traveled or go into the woods to suck deeper from the bone marrow of
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>    land. Most of the action takes place far from America, on ships,
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>    boats, islands, though it does begin, as Melville's life begins, in
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>    NYC, it quickly ships off with an international crew, islanders
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>    mostly, and with one noted exception, none of the crew return to
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>    America. But that one voice is American, it does return to America and
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>    the yarn Ishmael spins is American, is told from an American Point of
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>    View, and is about America, albeit, about a subjunctive America, one
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>    that might have been, one that had promise but lost its way. So, in
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>    theme, the book is most Pynchonian or Pynchon's are Melvillean. And
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>    Ahab, the tragic captain has much to say about how America has
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>    organized its sick crew of of islanders and chased whiteness and oil.
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>>    On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:55 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Why is Moby-Dick a Great American Novel? Honest question. I've never
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>> understood it as a novel that grapples with the Americanness of
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>> America the way so many other novels try to. The way M&D does, or so
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>> many of the others you list do. Moby-D is a frickin' GREAT novel
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>> written by an American. If I were one for leaderboards, I'd call it
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>> one of the greatest books ever written. But it's about the human
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>> condition as a crisis between epistemologies and ontologies, not what
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>> it means to be American, right? But, not being an American, I may be
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>> missing something.
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> 
>> And while I'd love a group read, we got about a quarter of the way
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>> through the last novel written by the feller we're all subscribed here
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>> for. The IV read at least managed to limp across the finish line; the
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>> AtD was a long march that lost many good soldiers by the way. None of
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>> this is a reflection on the books, just on the world of digital
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>> disengagement in which the Pynchon List is a Web 1.0 relic. We've been
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>> offered too many mindless pleasures to engage in the kind of deep and
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>> ongoing group read these volumes merit.
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> 
>> Prove me wrong, kids, prove me wrong.
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> 
>> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 9:36 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>> Traditionally, though, the typical GAN candidate requires heft, range,
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>>> verisimilitude, and--lest we forget--popularity. While beautifully
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>>> written and constructed, both William Gaddis's demanding The
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>>> Recognitions and Peter Matthiessen's Faulknerian Shadow Country have
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>>> failed to drum up a widespread readership. Thomas Pynchon's Mason &
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>>> Dixon is, by most measures, a better attempt at a GAN than Gravity's
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>>> Rainbow, but the latter boasts a hundred times as many fans.
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>>> Similarly, works on the margin, no matter how fine or insightful about
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>>> American life, seldom make the grade. One could argue strong cases for
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>>> the GANship of John Crowley's Little, Big; John Sladek's Roderick, or,
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>>> The Education of a Young Machine; Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; or,
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>>> with just a slight stretch, Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My
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>>> Lovely--but, even now, they all remain tainted with the dread word
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>>> "genre." Yet if Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind can be proposed
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>>> for GAN honors, why not Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Not that I'm doing
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>>> so, by the way.
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> 
>>> http://www.vqronline.org/big-read-can-single-book-sum-nation
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> 
>>> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:35 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>>> Only problem is with the idea of the great American novel, a concept
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>>>> that has, if nothing else, made for pulp and grist to/for/from the
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>>>> mill, but it's difficult to dismiss Melville's great white whale as
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>>>> candidate, and for Pynchon fans, in the world of great books,
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>>>> Moby-Dick or The Whale is a great influence. The common whiteness
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>>>> theme alone needs further development, and, as Melville's monstrosity
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>>>> gained critical mass when the excesses of market capitalism capsized
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>>>> the nation and the world's economy, it's seem a revisiting Melville
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>>>> now makes much ado of something, though what that something is has yet
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>>>> to be defined, though some will name it and paint it in clear shades
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>>>> of blackness, it seems so like the mysterious whale itself that
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>>>> smashes down on the masts of industry and greed, then suck all down in
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>>>> a Vortex to the bottomless perdition where God's foot weaves the
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>>>> tapestry, the mantle of Varo's Earth.
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>>> -
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>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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